Understanding
by Fat Molly
Summary: Sherlock loves feeding up John. John has issues concerning the fact that, well, he doesn't want to be fed up ALL the time. He doesn't want to live the lifestyle 24/7, in other words. What happens when John is thoroughly embarrassed by Sherlock's feeding enthusiasm? Weight gain, fat appreciation, fat admiration. WEIGHT GAIN - FAT KINK - FAT ADMIRATION - FAT APPRECIATION


warning: fat, weight appreciation, weight gain. KINKY. If you don't like, don't read.

...

There were times that John simply couldn't get through to Sherlock. With certain things, it was more than frustrating.

While John had indeed gotten through to Sherlock that he liked being heavy, particularly since it turned on his partner so much, there were still issues to be resolved in their relationship surrounding weight.

Primarily, John felt uncomfortable at making his weight a part of their daily lives. It was one thing to engage in sexual play centered around food. John loved it, and could have participated in that every day for hours - full stop.

But Sherlock was always the over-aggressive student, and simply didn't know when to quit.

True, Sherlock was always ravishingly beautiful as he spooned an entire carton's worth of scrambled eggs onto a plate, saying seriously, "eat up." John's entire face would flush when Sherlock patted and rubbed John's round tummy when they were in public. And any time that John didn't stuff himself at a meal, Sherlock would do the honors of getting an extra serving or three and coaxing it all into John's trembling mouth.

But while these ministrations were completed with affection, John felt curiously distraught the farther away these events took place from the sexual playground.

For example, it was neither sexy nor practical when Sherlock hid his properly-sized work shirts and forces john to wear shirts at least three sizes too small, with unprofessional gaps barely concealable beneath his clinic white jacket.

It was more annoying than it was a turn-on when Sherlock would show up during the workday and stuff in the clinic's tiny fridge an irresistible edible bouquet of chocolates and pastries - all of which were clearly labelled "John's: not for sharing" in red icing.

It was in fact mortifying when Sherlock would fondly pat John's belly in public. Especially when they were on the tube. John had lost count of the number of jokes from assholes who thought he looked pregnant, and well-intentioned-but-dotty compliments from older women who actually thought he *was* pregnant. Sherlock would sneer at them in response, and sometimes threaten the most rude ones with a menacing grin of doom, but fundamentally John felt like they would have been ignored had Sherlock just found someplace to put his hands that was less symbolic than John's belly.

John, in short, was getting tired of having a 24/7 lifestyle that he'd never explicitly agreed to. While he was indeed gaining weight at a rapid pace - how could he not, with Sherlock's diligent calculations and frequent calorie bombs - he was not enjoying it as much. He was never hungry, and rarely had the satisfying feeling of having not eaten all day and then eating himself silly when he came home . He felt in some ways like he had to escape to the clinic in order to have some space from being reminded that yes, he was fat, and yes, he was getting fatter, and yes, he liked it. It felt like Sherlock was trying too hard to make their life together a shared fetish fairy tale - and it was beginning to really tire John out.

So finally one day John arrived home from work to see a spread magnificently laid out on the table - and all of it was bright green. And none of it was vegetable.

"What happened here?" Asked John with a smile twitching on his lips.

"Explosion in the fridge," Sherlock said with a cavalier shrug. "Completely broke the damn thing. Honestly what's the use of a fridge that's not cold enough to keep midiyum brimyde safely in it?"

"So the fridge is broken, and all our food is full of some unstable preservative cooked up by your friends in Shanghai that's never been empirically tested?" John said, smiling despite himself.

"It's been empirically tested," insisted Sherlock indignantly. "I've been eating it every day for the past month. Just because it will explode when, prior to use, it isn't kept on dry ice doesn't mean it's _dangerous_, John."

John couldn't help but keep teasing, "Yes, but there's such a thing as peer review, Sherlock."

"Well, technically I am a peer," Sherlock responded, bustling around the table, pouring some gracefully normal-clolored wine. "Named by the queen herself. I could have you obligated to sweep and now every time you entered the room if I wanted."

With a salacious grin, John did just that. His too-small shirt rode up as he bowed, simultaneously his pants slipped just enough to display a healthy amount of arse-crack.

"Hm. Maybe I should reconsider ignoring my privileges," Sherlock said, and John giggled as Sherlock yanked up the pants and tugged down the front of the shirt.

"Moreover, I *have* an ABD in chemistry, if you don't recall," Sherlock went on, continuing to act playfully affronted. "Who knows, maybe this will be the thing that makes me take my dissertation seriously, John. You wouldn't want to get in the way of that would you?"

"Oh," John said, finding himself happily drawn into their drama, "I think there are things that would distract you from it despite yourself."

"Like how fat and podgy you're getting?" Sherlock asked, and John flushed with delight. "Well, about that. I think you know you've got something in front of you that would *substantially*assist in my research, John."

"And what," John asked, sitting down in the chair at the head of the table, "would that be?"

Sherlock merely glanced at the feast laid out on the table, and John found his own cock reacting accordingly.

"You can't expect me to eat this all," John said, knowing full well that this was indeed Sherlock's expectation.

"Expect?" Asked Sherlock with a grin. "Far from it. I simply know you will, what with your fat belly and its unquenchable hunger for more, more, more than I could ever provide it."

With that, he shoved an entire neon-green meat pie towards John. "I know you'll eat it." Sherlock turned around and started fiddling with his phone. "And when you're done, you won't be able to resist these spring rolls."

"Probably not," John admitted, settling himself in for a nice evening's gorge.

He had already eaten the entire pie, an entire box of spring rolls, and was medicating his swollen belly with a pint of formerly-white vanilla gelato when the bathroom door closed, and Greg Lestrade walked into the room.

"You kids," was all he said, shaking his head at the mess on the table, the sight of John with his shirt rolled up and trousers unbuttoned, and Sherlock watching John eat with rapt attention. "You could do with being more discreet about your Pervy side, gentlemen. Take a leaf out of your brother's book, Sherlock."

At the sight of the chief inspector, John's jaw dropped, and his entire face went red. He hastily pulled his shirt down - well as far as it would go - and shoved the carton of gelato as far away from him as it could possibly go.

"What's wrong?" asked Sherlock, clearly perplexed.

John was so mortified that he couldn't even speak for a full minute. Given that he was so full, it was probably for the best. Since John's ability to put away immense amounts of food was entirely dependent on a lack of feeling stressed. Because the thing is, stress always created a sense of nausea in him. And feeling stress-related nausea, plus being stuffed with a full four generous servings of dinner, was not a good combination.

"Wha- what are you doing here?" asked John, once he was safely assured that he wasn't going to spew all over Lestrade's rumpled suit and Sherlock's concerned face.

"Erm." Lestrade glanced at Sherlock with his distinctive not my division look, and said, slowly, somewhat (but only somewhat) apologetically, "Sherlock had me come over to look at some wallpaper."

"Wallpaper?" exclaimed John, putting a hand to his mouth as he dangerously hiccupped.

"I mean, number forty-three is the closest match, I guess," Lestrade said, handing back a dollar-store photo book of (apparently) wallpaper samples back to Sherlock.

"Dammit," said Sherlock, frowning and throwing the book across the room. A few shreds of wallpaper samples fluttered out of the book. "Can't you have another look at seventy-eight?"

"It's really nothing like it," Lestrade responded objectively.

"But! all you have is a strip of the sample, and based on the grain- on a microscopic level - seventy eight is the closest match."

"Erm, sure," Lestrade said, "maybe. I'm not a scientist, Sherlock. But my gut says the origin sample is closest to forty-three. And forensics at the yard tend to agree, based on the photos I texted them."

"You texted all of them?" Sherlock asked.

"All ninety two."

"Damn." Sherlock stood up, completely oblivious to John's overwhelming discomfort, and began pacing the room. "It's possible that I missed something else in the building-"

"-Erm," John interrupted. He had scooted so that his belly was firmly underneath the table, concealing his overindulgence as much as possible. "Sherlock?"

"Yes?" Sherlock gazed at him with penetrating eyes.

"...this, this is not good."

Sherlock took a step back. "How much not good? A bit?"

"Entirely not good, Sherlock," said John, covering his face with his hands.

"Ahem," Lestrade said, "I'd better be off. Got myself a date."

"Congratulations," said Sherlock with an eyeroll. "Does it even count as a date when you've been seeing each other for six years?"

"And that," Lestrade said with a longsuffering sigh, "is my cue to leave. Have fun with your Holmes boy, John. I'm off to try and convince mine that I'm not going to get bored of him and run off with Sherlock anytime soon. It's times like these that I wonder why he worries so."

"Stop humblebragging and get your arse out of here," Sherlock said with a low snarl.

Lestrade muttered, "Lunatic!" and went out the door.

Whereupon Sherlock got up and opened the window, letting in the icy air of a winter's evening.

"What are you doing?" John demanded, "it's already cold in here."

"You're cold?" Sherlock asked, incredulous. "Your face is red, from your ears to your delightfully plump chin."

This made John even redder, of course, but he managed to stammer, "I'm red because I'm embarrassed. Couldn't you tell? Didn't I give you all the signals?"

Sherlock analyzed John with a penetrating look.

"What was there to be embarrassed about?" he asked finally. "It's Lestrade. He knows what we get up to. He's been feeding my brother up for ages."

"That's not the point," John responded, feeling a prickling in his eye. He didn't usually get this sappy, but after a feeding was when he was most likely to get this way. "You didn't even let me know he was here."

"Why would that matter?" Sherlock asked pointedly. "You weren't masturbating. I wasn't sucking your cock, though I certainly would have liked to be doing that, and plan very much to do so this evening. You were just… eating. Last I checked, that was a publicly acceptable activity."

"Of course eating is publicly acceptable," retorted John. "But Sherlock - I… I don't think you understand how… how intimate this kind of thing is for me."

"Intimate," reflected Sherlock back, biting his lip. "What do you mean?"

"Like," John began, taking in a breath. He didn't like to have intense conversations like this on a full, over-stimulated stomach. Sherlock seemed to intuit this feeling at least, and Sherlock sat down on the floor next to John, and began massaging John's distended belly. "Like, Sherlock, you realize that what you're doing is very, very arousing to me, right?"

"What I'm doing now?" Sherlock said in a flat voice. This was a good sign - it meant he was listening intently, cataloguing everything John was saying. It was nice to feel that he was being heard.

"Yes," said John, "as well as, well, stuffing myself silly. For me, it's somewhat similar to having sex."

"Oh," said Sherlock, in a way that sounded like he was having trouble understanding what John meant.

"I mean," John went on, "you know how sometimes I have an orgasm without you even touching me at all, simply because I ate so much?"

"Yes?" Sherlock responded, still not getting it.

"Well! You see that this kind of eating, it's basically, for me, like having sex. In fact, it's very specifically a part of having sex. While I like being fat all of the time, I only really like to stuff myself when it's a part of actually having sex. Not when, for example, we're out at a charity ball or something. Or letting our best mate look over wallpaper samples in the next room."

"I mean," Sherlock responded, "it's not as if we were actually doing anything."

"As I said," John reiterated, "for me, eating until I'm stuffed to burst is effectively sex. You know I can come just as a result of eating until I can't eat another bite. So why would you try and make me do this in public without asking me first?"

Sherlock chewed his bottom lip, readjusting himself so he was sitting cross-legged on the floor instead of sitting on his thin thighs. John began to desperately wish that Sherlock was as interested in eating as he was in feeding John - Sherlock truly could do with some plumping up.

"You wouldn't start having sex with me in public without giving us some privacy," John went on, seeing that he was getting through to Sherlock, at least a little. "Why shouldn't you do me the same courtesy before feeding me?"

Sherlock closed his eyes.

"Got it," he said, looking stricken. "Got it."

He looked so pathetically sad, about to cry as he realized with crushing distress what John was implying. John struggled into a more upright sitting position, grabbed Sherlock's face, and shoved it into the side of his well-filled belly.

"Don't look like that," John said affectionately. "You're an idiot, but definitely my kind of idiot. I'm not breaking up with you over this," he added, habitually affirming Sherlock's long-held fear that Sherlock had articulated in a conversation a few years ago. "You just made an error. And honestly, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. What if it had been Molly, for instance? Or your brother?"

"Or Anderson," Sherlock said. John could feel Sherlock's hot, silent tears begin to leak through his cotton shirt, but also could feel Sherlock facial muscles smiling as they pressed against John's comforting, flabby tummy.

"Yeah," John said with a laugh that shook through his fat belly. "Or Anderson."

"I think we'd better ask him to join in sometime," said Sherlock muffledly into John's shirt. "He's put on a few himself these past few years."

"So does everyone past the age of forty, Sherlock. It doesn't mean he's into what we're into."

"Well," Sherlock said, sitting back and letting the fingers of his left hand explore John's well-formed overhang. "You haven't seen the way he looks at you when you're not looking."

John chuckled gently. "Fair enough."

Sherlock sniffled, and rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, and then looked John dead in the eyes. "Are we okay?" he asked, seeking confirmation.

John grasped Sherlock's snotty hand. "We're good. We're very good. I love you."

"I love you," Sherlock said with a low rumble, and rose to his feet, all angles and bones. "Now that we're alone - are you going to get to work on my dissertation research or not?"

"Certainly," said John with a smile, and he began to push through the next round of edibles - freshly hydrated, boxed mashed potatoes, as green as bile. But as delicious as freshly mashed.

This set of circumstances did indeed successfully help Sherlock better understand John's needs as a lover. After this incident, John received no more regular pastry deliveries (at least, well, not nearly as many). He got no more unsolicited public belly rubs (well, at least not in the tube - sometimes Sherlock couldn't resist when they were at a white-tie event and John was squeezed into a tight-fitting tuxedo - but for the most part, he kept his touching to less-pregnant-joke-inducing areas. Like John's shoulder, or the back of John's neck, or John's butt, or John's growing fat chin, or John's love-handles...well, basically everywhere aside from the direct front of John's belly). And John no longer was stuffed by Sherlock at cocktail parties and charity dinners.

Well, most of the time. Truth be told, John found himself missing the public stuffing thing as soon as he issued a ban on it.

Two weeks after this progressive conversation, John and Sherlock were at an art charity event for Harry's girlfriend's friend or something. They were nothing more than warm bodies to help fill the space. And despite Sherlock's celebrity, no one was paying them any mind, because the crowd was too hipster to act like they gave a damn about a celebrity, even one as interesting as Sherlock.

So Sherlock and John were in the corner, bored as hell after looking at all of the art that made no sense. They'd made all the vagina and dick jokes they could about the sculptures, paintings, and frescoes, and they had fought their way into the only comfortable seats in the spartan loft in which this event was taking place.

Well, there was only one comfortable seat, really, and it should have been enough space for three normal-sized people, but John was far from normal-sized at this point in his gaining life. The loveseat had just barely enough room for John and another weighty person - a French woman with diabetically-swollen calves and too much makeup who kept raising her eyebrow at John in a conspiratorial 'we're-the-only-fat-people-here, you-wanna-blow-this-joint-and-hook-up' fashion. This kept happening until Sherlock possessively put a hand on John's shoulder and stare-warred with her until she pretended to lose interest and began awkwardly looking at the nearest vagina sculpture.

Sherlock briefly assessed the costs and benefits of squeezing himself into the slight space between John's thighs and the French woman's thighs, and ended up deciding against attempting such a maneuver, and he opted instead to perch on the armrest of the loveseat and wrap his arm around John and, coverty, with one finger, massage the outline of John's heavy man-boob. This lasted for all of five minutes, until John's stomach rumbled.

"You hungry?" Sherlock asked, "want me to grab you something?"

"Erm," John said, thinking about both their conversation of two weeks ago as well as the hunger he was feeling at that moment. The hunger won out, and he said, with a sigh, "sure."

The plate that Sherlock brought back was balanced and conservative - a few sticks of cheese, several items from the vegetable tray, and a single piece of bruschetta.

"That's it?" John complained despite himself. "They've got oysters at this damn thing, Sherlock. Why the hell didn't you bring me a bucketful?"

"Do… do you want a bucketfull?" asked Sherlock, his voice becoming tense with the conflicting experiences of desire and confusion.

"Erm. Well. Yes," John said, in a low voice, and amended, as Sherlock (bewilderedly) got up to fetch John a bucketfull of oysters, "But slowly. Little portions. Bit by bit, I'll eat the whole fucking table of hors d'oeuvres. But we can't get away with it unless you're… covert about it."

Sherlock nodded with a firm, precise motion. "Right away, doctor."

And, well, judging by the sated state of John's stomach once they left to go home, the number of glares that the French woman gave them both, and the picked-clean food table, John realized that he didn't mind exhibiting his lust in public. It just had to do with the amount of control he had over the situation, he realized as he talked about it with Sherlock later. When it was sprung on him, without his signing-on to participate - that made it a bit less good.

But when John decided he wanted to eat himself out of his pants on any particular occasion - well, then they could both have a good time.

And, Sherlock being Sherlock, Sherlock soon discovered that he was very good at persuading John to want to eat during any given scenario. Which meant, ultimately, that they both were happy with how the whole thing shook out.

~fin~


End file.
